The electronic transmission of documents by way of facsimile (fax) systems employing public and private switched telephone networks has become both commonplace and, often, an essential component in many business activities. In such a setting, it is very common for the fax terminals (fax machines) to be kept quite busy during a major fraction of the business day. Moreover, where sender and recipient are in different time zones, the “business day” can approach 24 hours, particularly in international activities. It is common for fax users to “broadcast” documents to a number of different recipients, that is, send the same message to several different fax machines. It is also true that the contents of some faxed documents are of such a sensitive nature that the originator or addressee would like to have a measure of control over who might see those documents as they move from the receiving machine to the hands of the actual addressee.
These circumstances present a number of practical problems for a fax user. In order to make a successful fax transmission it is necessary that the receiving machine be available at the time that the transmitting machine attempts to contact it. If the receiving machine is already in use handling another message, the transmitter will receive a “busy” signal. The originator's only recourse is to continue initiating telephone calls until contact can be established. This is a “hit or miss” process at best and can be very wasteful of the originating operator's time.
Some, rather expensive, fax machines have digital memories which will allow them to memorize the document to be transmitted and to be programmed to make multiple redials in an effort to establish contact in an automatic way. However, this is limited to only one or two documents and, more importantly, it ties up the transmitting machine until the effort is successful or abandoned. This is hardly an acceptable solution if that machine has other documents to send or receive.
There are other conditions which can result in a failure to transmit even though a telephone connection has been established. Perhaps the most common of these is the absence of paper in the receiving machine. In such situations, repeated attempts to “redial” will lead to repeated toll charges with each attempt, with no actual success until the receiving machine is serviced (which may be some time if the machine is operating unattended because it is nighttime half-way around the world).
Busy machines which are destined to receive messages are affected by the converse problem. Since they and the prospective transmitting machines must engage in (perhaps, automated) “telephone tag”, they are used very inefficiently. When a transmitting machine gets a busy signal, even if it automatically redials, it can only guess at when the receiving machine will be available. Thus, the receiving machine will likely remain idle for some fraction of the time until such an attempt is made.
The practice of broadcasting documents to a number of addressees obviously compounds these problems and adds still others of its own. Even if one does not encounter busy signals or impaired machines, convenient broadcasting demands an expensive memory-type fax machine on the transmitting end. Such machines read in the document once and then proceed to automatically dial the various recipient machines. This process ties up the sending machine and its telephone line and makes them unavailable for incoming calls. This, of course, exacerbates the busy signal problem for those units trying to contact the sending machine.
The security of sensitive documents is still another problem. Once contact is established between two fax machines, the transmission of the document proceeds automatically, irrespective of who may be standing by the receiving machine at the time. In a busy office, the contents of these documents are accessible to the fax operator and anyone else who happens to be in the vicinity.
It is also common for individuals to wish to deliver fax documents to a recipient who is not currently available through a known machine (e.g. a person on a business trip). This is a very inconvenient situation in that it requires that the paper documents be held until the traveler phones in from a remote machine. It further requires that there be someone available at that time who has knowledge of and access to the documents intended for the recipient.
Another concern is related to so-called paperless fax terminals. In recent years, paperless fax techniques allow a computer or a micro-processor equipped with specific software and modem to directly transmit and receive facsimile messages. However, it is also very common that the recipient is not in his or her office (the paperless fax terminal may also be located at home) at the time when fax message is coming. For example, the recipient is out to lunch or otherwise absent from his or her office or home. This requires the sender to retry the communication message delivery again and again if there is no other fax machine available in the office.
Still another concern is adequate accounting control over the billing of calls. Typically, many businesses wish to be able to track the costs of both fax machine use and the associated telephone charges. While telephone charges can be ascertained from telephone company records, in the present environment these must be related to records of the number of pages transmitted per call and so forth, separately maintained by the fax machine or its attendants.